Sara Rafsky

Sara Rafsky is research associate in CPJ's Americas program. A freelance journalist in South America and Southeast Asia, she was awarded a 2008 Fulbright Grant to research photojournalism and the Colombian armed conflict.

The world premiere of Laura Poitras's highly anticipated documentary "CITIZENFOUR" at the New York Film Festival occurred with the appropriate amount of intrigue for a film about last year's dramatic revelations of the National Security Agency's surveillance programs. The press and premiere screenings were clocked to begin simultaneously on Friday so no breaking news could be leaked. The movie was a last-minute addition to the festival and the first complete screening even for film industry professionals, who had previously seen it only with crucial redactions. In a surreal touch, a 9-foot tall statue of the film's protagonist, Edward Snowden, mysteriously appeared in a park in New York earlier that day at the very moment--and apparently coincidentally--in which another principal character, journalist Glenn Greenwald, was there having breakfast.

After a summer plagued by war and disease abroad and partisan fighting at home, it was not hard to fathom why President Barack Obama would yearn for a retreat. But from which of the mounting crises did the president hope to escape: Ukraine? Islamic State? Ebola? The Tea Party? None of the above, according to an interview with Obama on the Sunday television news program "Meet the Press," in early September. "What I'd love," he said, "is a vacation from the press."

Nearly seven months ago, CPJ published its first in-depth report
on press freedom in the United States, concluding that the Obama
administration's aggressive prosecution of leakers of classified information,
broad surveillance programs, and moves to stem the routine disclosure of
information to the press meant that the president had fallen far short of his
campaign promise to have the most open government in U.S. history. What's
changed since? A quick survey of recent events suggests not much.

In the three years since its theatrical premiere, the Mexican
documentary "Presumed Guilty" ("Presunto Culpable") has earned enough headlines
to make any film publicist envious. The movie has been banned, disparaged, acclaimed,
and the subject of multiple lawsuits. Along the way, it has broken every
documentary box office record in Mexico. Now a series of judicial decisions in
the past week suggests that, while the discussion it sparked will continue, the
film's legal battles may be drawing to a close.

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Seven months after Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa flirted
with the idea of offering asylum to former National Security Agency contractor
Edward Snowden, intercepted communications and leaked emails are again making
headlines in the Andean country. This time, the story is not about
international surveillance but a window onto the latest front in the
ever-escalating war between the president and his critics.

Before his staffers, under government duress, took power drills and angle grinders to destroy company Macbooks in the newspaper's basement, Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger made sure to send Edward Snowden's leaked documents to New York newsrooms for safekeeping.

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Forty-two years ago next month, The New York Times published the first of the Pentagon Papers, a
trove of classified documents on U.S. military involvement in Vietnam, sparking
a landmark legal case on press freedom.

One
month after their colleague Rodrigo Neto was gunned down on the street
after eating at a popular outdoor barbecue restaurant, the journalists of Vale do Aço, Brazil, were indignant. Denouncing
a sluggish investigation and the possibility of police involvement in the
murder, they strapped black bands to their wrists in a sign of solidarity, put
on T-shirts bearing Neto's name, and took to the streets to demand justice. Six
days later, Walgney Assis Carvalho, a photographer who claimed to have
knowledge of the crime, was shot twice in the back by a masked assassin as he
sat at a fish restaurant. The journalists of Vale do Aço are still indignant, but now they are terrified.

Two years ago this week, on the central boulevard of the
Western Libyan city of Misurata, freelance photographers Tim Hetherington and
Chris Hondros were
killed by mortar rounds from government forces. Hondros lost consciousness
almost immediately. Hetherington bled out in the back of a pick-up truck as he
clutched the hand of a Spanish photographer.

Having broken through one long-standing barrier, Yoani
Sánchez, the pioneering figure in Cuba's independent
blogosphere, is looking to smash another. "It seemed like an impossible
dream, but here I am," Sánchez told a gathering today at CPJ's New York
offices. After being denied
travel authorization at least 20 times in the past, Sánchez is in the midst of her
first trip abroad in a decade. And now, Sánchez said, she plans to launch a new
publication upon her return to the island nation. Though the project is still
in conception, she hopes the result will be modern and innovative in look and
content, carrying everything from comprehensive sports coverage to critical
opinion columns.